Du rififi chez les hommes (Un hommage au Quand la ville dort (The Asphalt Jungle)

I really loved this film immensely. To me it is a loving tribute to one of my favorite Noirs, The Asphalt Jungle. The story is taut, the cinematography is delicious and Jean Servais is excellent as Tony le Stéphanois. The scenes of Paris are awesome and Dassin in a 2000 interview said that during the shooting for the film he refused to work on a day if it was sunny outside. I like to think of the movie as part 3 of Jules Dassin's Big City Tryptich; NYC in The Naked City; London in Night and The City and Paris in Du rififi chez les hommes . I strongly recommend this film. Below is Ebert's review who is clearly as taken as I by the French New Wave of Cinema.

Tim Brophy
May 31st 2009



Rififi

Release Date: 1954


Roger Ebert / Sep 1, 2002



The modern heist movie was invented in Paris in 1954 by Jules Dassin, with "Rififi," and Jean-Pierre Melville, with "Bob le Flambeur." Dassin built his film around a 28-minute safe-cracking sequence that is the father of all later movies in which thieves carry out complicated robberies. Working across Paris at the same time, Melville's film, which translates as "Bob the High Roller," perfected the plot in which a veteran criminal gathers a group of specialists to make a big score. The Melville picture was remade twice as "Ocean's Eleven," and echoes of the Dassin can be found from Kubrick's "The Killing" to Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs." They both owe something to John Huston's "The Asphalt Jungle" (1950), which has the general idea but not the attention to detail.

"Rififi" was called by Francois Truffaut the best film noir he'd ever seen (it was based, he added, on the worst noir novel he'd ever read). Dassin's inspiration was to expand the safe-cracking job, which is negligible in the book, into a breathless sequence that occupies a fourth of the running time and is played entirely without words or music. So meticulous is the construction and so specific the detail of this scene that it's said the Paris police briefly banned the movie because they feared it was an instructional guide.

There is something else unique about the heist scene: It is the centerpiece of the film, not the climax. In a modern heist film, like "The Score" (2001), the execution of the robbery fills most of the third act. "Rififi" is more interested in the human element, and plays as a parabola, with the heist at the top before the characters descend to collect their wages of sin. After the heist there is still a kidnapping to go.

The film was shot on a modest $200,000 budget on Paris locations that Dassin scouted while wandering unemployed around the town; he was on the Hollywood blacklist and hadn't worked in four years. Streets are usually wet in movies because they photograph better that way, but Paris is especially damp in "Rififi," shot in wintertime and showing a criminal milieu where the only warmth comes in a flat where one of the crooks lives with his wife and little boy.

The film centers on Tony (Jean Servais, a Belgian actor who had gone through hard times because of alcoholism). Always referred to as "the Stephanois," he's a sad-eyed, tubercular ex-con who dotes on the little boy, his godson. Tony reveals a nasty streak of cruelty against a former mistress, and is quite capable of cold-blooded murder, but by the end he seems purified by loss. His character believes in honor among thieves, and his lonely vengeance against the kidnappers provides the film with its soul.

The boy's father is Jo the Swede (Carl Moehner). Jo and his friend Mario (Robert Manuel) have their eyes on diamonds in a store window, and want to smash and grab just before the light turns green for their getaway car. Tony nixes the plan and advises them to go for the big score--the store's safe. They enlist a safecracker named Cesar, who is played by Dassin himself (as "Perlo Vita").

Casing the store is done with a bold brilliance. Tony ostentatiously leaves his bulging wallet neglected on a counter, to show his indifference to money. Determining the type of the safe and the kind of alarm, they stage a rehearsal, test the alarm's sensitivity (it responds to vibrations) and discover they can immobilize it with foam from a fire extinguisher.

"No rods," Tony advises. "Get caught with a rod, it's the slammer for life." But the thieves are as ruthless as necessary, tying up the couple who live over the diamond store before gingerly hammering their way through the ceiling with a cushioned hammer. The composer, Georges Auric, originally wrote music for this sequence, but agreed with Dassin it was unnecessary, and for 28 minutes we hear nothing but taps, breathing, some plaster falling into an umbrella used to catch it, some muffled coughs, and then, after the alarm is disabled, the screech of the drills used to cut into safe. There is, of course, no reason why the men cannot talk softly, and so the silence is Dassin's inspired directorial choice, underlining the suspense. When I saw the film in a 2002 revival in London, the 28-minute sequence played as it always does, to a theater that was conspicuously hushed in sympathy.

The movie opens with a backroom poker game, and after the heist Dassin mirrors that scene with another shot of men around a table. Nice, how he uses closeups of their eyes before showing the diamonds. They have committed a perfect crime, but Cesar gives a ring to a girlfriend, and when it's spotted by Pierre (Marcel Lupovici), the boss of a Montmartre nightclub, he guesses the identity of the thieves and sends his men after them for the jewels.

The last third of the film centers around the kidnapping of Jo's son, who will allegedly be returned if the jewels are handed over. Tony knows better: The boy is a witness. He searches for the boy, questioning bartenders, hookers, tough guys and old pals to get a lead. In these scenes Montmartre seems to cower beneath the damp skies of dawn.

The film's violence has a crude awkwardness that makes it seem more real. Finding a cop beside the stolen getaway car, Tony leaps from a shadow and cudgels him, not with the smooth grace and sensational sound effects of a modern crime picture, but with the clumsiness of a man not accustomed to hitting policemen. Much of the violence takes place just off screen; that may be because of the production codes of the day, but it's effective because the focus falls on the face of the person committing the violence, and not on the violence itself.

There is one scene nobody ever forgets. Cesar the safecracker, whose stupidity lead to the betrayal of the perfect crime, is found by Tony tied to a pillar in the deserted nightclub. He tries to apologize for his mistake. He's sincere, and Tony knows he's sincere. "I liked you, Macaroni," Tony tells Cesar. "But you know the rules." Cesar (played by Dassin) does, and nods sadly.

Dassin was a particular master of shooting on city locations. "The Naked City" (1948) is famous for its semi-documentary use of New York. His great London noir "Night and the City" (1950), with Richard Widmark as a desperate fugitive hunted by mobsters, makes such good use of darkness and the rubble of bomb sites that it deserves comparison with "The Third Man." In "Rififi," Dassin finds everyday locales: Nightclubs, bistros, a construction site, investing them with a grey reality. Just before the heist begins, there is a scene all the more lovely because it is unnecessary, in which nightclub musicians warm up and gradually slide into collaboration. There's a real sense of Montmartre in the 1950s.

Dassin, born in 1911, still giving interviews in 2002, was named as a onetime communist during the McCarthy witchhunt. He wasn't crazy about the "Rififi" project but needed work. Its worldwide success was a blow against the blacklist, which fell after the listed writer Dalton Trumbo was openly hired by Kubrick for "Spartacus" and Otto Preminger for "Exodus," both in 1960. By then Dassin had settled in Europe; he was married to the fiery Greek actress Melina Mercouri from 1966 until her death in 1994. His last great success, "Topkapi" (1964) was a return to the heist genre, and is credited by "Mission Impossible." Although Dassin returned to the U.S. occasionally, as for the successful black militant drama "Up Tight" (1968), he was basically lost to American moviemaking, and lives in Athens on a street named for Mercouri. The restoration of "Rififi," long available only on a shabby videotape, rescues a milestone in movie history.
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copyright 2005, rogerebert.com

The Dark City (1998)

Dark City
Discovering human nature

Release Date: 2005


BY ROGER EBERT / Nov 6, 2005



"Dark City" by Alex Proyas resembles its great silent predecessor "Metropolis" in asking what it is that makes us human, and why it cannot be changed by decree. Both films are about false worlds created to fabricate ideal societies, and in both the machinery of the rulers is destroyed by the hearts of the ruled. Both are parables in which a dangerous weapon attacks the order of things: a free human who can see what really is, and question it. "Dark City" contains a threat more terrible than any of the horrors in "Metropolis," because the rulers of the city can control the memories of its citizens; if we are the sum of all that has happened to us, then what are we when nothing has happened to us?

In "Dark City" (1998), all of the human memories are newly fabricated when the hands of the clock reach 12. This is defined as "midnight," but the term is deceptive, because there is no noon. "First came darkness, then came the Strangers," we are told in the opening narration. In the beginning, there was no light. John Murdoch, the hero, asks Bumstead, the police detective: "When was the last time you remember doing something during the day?" Bumstead is surprised by the question. "You know something?" Murdoch asks him. "I don't think the sun even exists in this place. I've been up for hours and hours, and the night never ends here."

The narration explains that the Strangers came from another galaxy and collected a group of humans to study them. Their civilization is dying. They seek to find the secret of the human heart, or soul, or whatever it is that falls outside their compass. They create a vast artificial city, which can be fabricated, or "tuned," whenever they want to run another experiment.

We see the tuning taking place. All humans lose consciousness. All machinery stops. Changes are made in the city. Skyscrapers are extruded from the primordial materials of the underworld, architecture is devised, rooms are prepared for their inhabitants, props are set in place. Aided by a human scientist, the Strangers inject memories into the foreheads of their test subjects. When humans awaken, they have no memory of the day before; everything they remember has been injected from a communal memory bank. If a man commits murder one day and then is given a new identity, is he still capable of committing murder? Are men inherently good or evil, or is it a matter of how they think of themselves? The Strangers need to know.

Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) has developed an immunity to the devices of the Strangers. His latest memory injection was incomplete. It was administered by Dr. Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland), a scientist who works for the Strangers but has no love for them. Murdoch wakes in a hotel room with the corpse of a dead woman; the script for the day has made him a serial killer of prostitutes. Schreber warns him he is the subject of an experiment but has proven resistant to it. The Strangers are coming for him, and he must flee.

That sets the story into motion: Murdoch wanders through the city, trying to discover its underlying nature; Detective Bumstead (William Hurt) tries to capture him, but will gradually be won over by Murdoch's questions (he is programmed as a cop, but not a very good one; he keeps complaining, "no one ever listens to me"). Then there is the torch singer, Emma (Jennifer Connelly), who remembers that she is John's wife and loves him, and that they met at Shell Beach. Everyone says they know how to go to Shell Beach. But no one seems able to say exactly where it is.

The Strangers occupy the bodies of human cadavers. Most of them are tall; one is in a child's body but is no child. The alien beings themselves, living inside the corpses, look like spiders made of frightened noodles. They can levitate, they can change the matter of the city at will, they have a hive insect organization, they gather in a subterranean cavern to collectively retune the city. This cavern has visuals reminding us of two Fritz Lang films: the underworld mechanisms in "Metropolis" (1927) and his "M" (1931), with the pale faces of criminals rising row above row into the gloom.

In October, I went through "Dark City" a shot at a time for four days at the Hawaii Film festival, with moviegoers who were as curious as I was. We froze frames, we dissected special effects, we debated the meaning of the film, and our numbers even included a psychiatrist who told us of the original Daniel Schreber, a schizophrenic whose book on his condition influenced Freud and Jung.

Sometimes during the shot-by-shot analysis, we simply froze a frame and regarded it. Some of the street scenes echo paintings by Edward Hopper or Jack Vettriano. This is not only a beautiful film but a generous one, which supplies rich depth and imagination and many more details than are really necessary to tell the story. Small wonder that the name Bumstead appears, perhaps in honor of Henry Bumstead, one of the greatest Hollywood art directors. The world created by the Strangers seems borrowed from 1940s film noir; we see fedoras, cigarettes, neon signs, automats, older cars (and some newer ones -- the world is not consistent). Proyas wrote the screenplay with David S. Goyer and Lem Dobbs; the screenplays Dobbs wrote for "Kafka" and Goyer wrote for "Batman Begins" contain some of the same notes sounded here.

Proyas likes deep-focus compositions. Many interior spaces are long and narrow. Exteriors look down one street to the vanishing point, and then the camera pans to look down another street, equally long. The lighting is low-key and moody. The color scheme depends on blacks, browns, shadows and the pallor of the Strangers; warmer colors exist in human faces, in neon signs and on the billboard for Shell Beach. "I am simply grateful for this shot," I said in Hawaii more than once. "It is as well-done as it can possibly be." Many other great films give you the same feeling -- that their makers were carried far beyond the actual requirements of their work into the passion of creating something wonderful.

I believe more than ever that "Dark City" is one of the great modern films. It preceded "The Matrix" by a year (both films used a few of the same sets in Australia), and on a smaller budget, with special effects that owe as much to imagination as to technology, did what "The Matrix" wanted to do, earlier and with more feeling.

The poignancy of "Dark City" emerges in its love stories. At a crucial point, John Murdoch tells Emma, "Everything you remember, and everything I'm supposed to remember, never really happened." Emma doesn't think that can be true. "I so vividly remember meeting you," she says. "I remember falling in love with you." Yes, she remembers. But this is the first time they have met. "I love you, John," she says. "You can't fake something like that." And Murdoch says, "No, you can't." You can inform someone who they love, and that is what the Strangers have done with their memory injection. But what she feels cannot be injected. That is the part the strangers do not understand. Emma has a small role but it is at the heart of the movie, because she truly knows love; John has still to discover it -- to learn about it from her.

The Strangers are not evil. They simply proceed from alien assumptions. They are not even omnipotent, which is why Murdoch, Bumstead and Schreber have relative freedom to move about the city. At the end, we feel a little sorry for them. They will die surrounded by happy beings whose secrets they could not discover.

Notice an opening shot that approaches the hotel window behind which we meet Murdoch. The window is a circular dome in a rectangular frame. As clearly as possible, it looks like the "face" of Hal 9000 in "2001." Hal was a computer that understood everything, except what it was to be human and have emotions. "Dark City" considers the same theme in a film that creates a completely artificial world in which humans teach themselves to be themselves.

Note: Ebert did commentary tracks for the original DVD of "Dark City" and the forthcoming 2006 Director's Cut. There are Great Movies essays on "Metropolis," "M" and "2001" online at rogerebert.com.





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copyright 2005, rogerebert.com

The Big Heat

The Big Heat

Release Date: 1953


Roger Ebert / Jun 6, 2004



Glenn Ford plays a straight-arrow police detective named Bannion in Fritz Lang's "The Big Heat" (1953) -- unbending, courageous, fearless. He takes on the criminals who control the politics in his town and defeats them. One of his motives is revenge for the murder of his wife, but even before that happens he has an implacable hatred for the gang headed by Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby) and his right-hand man Vince Stone (Lee Marvin). "Thieves," he calls them, preferably to their faces. He is the good cop in a bad town.

That at least is the surface reality of the film. But there is another level coiling away underneath, a subversive level in which Lang questions the human cost of Bannion's ethical stand. Two women lose their lives because they trust Bannion, and a third is sent to her death because of information Bannion gives her. That may not have been his conscious intention, but a cop as clever as Bannion should know when to keep his trap shut.

The film is as deceptive and two-faced as anything Lang ever made, with its sunny domestic tranquility precariously separated from a world of violence. Bannion thinks he can draw a line between his loving wife and adorable child, and the villains he deals with at work. But he invites evil into the lives of his wife and two other women by his self-righteous heroism. Does it ever occur to him that he is at least partly responsible for their deaths? No, apparently it doesn't, and that's one reason the film is so insidiously chilling; he continues on his mission oblivious to its cost. Oh, he's right, of course, that Lagana and Stone are vermin. But tell that to the women he obliviously sends into harm's way.

He's working on a case that begins with the suicide of a cop who was sick of being on the mob's payroll. He questions Bertha, the cop's widow (Jeanette Nolan), who says her husband killed himself because he was sick. Bannion doesn't think her story smells right, and then is approached by Lucy (Dorothy Green), the cop's mistress, who tells him the cop was in perfect health. Bannion unwisely tells Bertha what Lucy told him, she tells Lagana, and Lucy is dumped dead on a county road. If he suspects Bertha and half-believes Lucy, and Bertha is still alive, then she must be talking to the mob. Why didn't Bannion suspect that? How naive can he be?

Bannion is told by his boss to lay off the case: "I got a call from upstairs." That night his wife (Jocelyn Brando, Marlon's sister) gets a threatening telephone call, and Bannion is enraged. He walks into Lagana's house, threatens him and beats up his bodyguard. Does he think this might put his own family in danger? Apparently not, until a bomb goes off when his wife starts the car.

Within a few days, he threatens Vince Stone and orders him out of the bar where the mob hangs out. Stone's girl Debby (Gloria Grahame), fed up with Stone, follows Bannion onto the street. He takes her to his hotel room, where they drink and he pumps her for information, and there is just a moment when he almost forgets he is a recent widower.

Debby was followed to the hotel, and when she returns to Stone, he throws a pot of boiling coffee into her face, in one of the most famous scenes in noir history. Her face half-covered by bandages, she escapes from the hospital and asks Bannion to protect her. He tells her that Bertha the widow has the goods on the mob, is being paid off by the week and has arranged for the information to go to the papers if she dies.

Does he tell Debby this because he wants her to kill the widow? Does it even occur to him that she might, as a way of avenging the scars to her face? Does he expect that will lead to her own death? Of course not. In a passive-aggressive way, he blandly sets these women up for death. When the elderly, lame bookkeeper at a junkyard risks her life to give him information about his wife's killer, he even persuades her to knock on the killer's door so she can identify him. Dangerous? Yes, but, to Bannion, an acceptable risk -- for her.

Fritz Lang (1890-1976) was one of the cinema's great architects of evil. His "Metropolis" (1927) is one of the best of all silent films, but it was with "M" (1931), and Peter Lorre's eerie performance as a child murderer, that he stared unblinking at pure malevolence. He fled Hitler and Germany and became a prolific director of Hollywood genre pictures -- some competent, some masterpieces of film noir, the greatest "The Big Heat." There is a kind of ironic pessimism in his work, undermining the apparent bravery of his heroes.

Glenn Ford plays a perfectly acceptable honest cop in "The Big Heat." He can be quiet and contained and implacable, but that Bannion is for surface and show. When he gets angry, he's capable of sudden violence -- as when he nearly strangles two characters. "The Big Heat" advances dutifully with Bannion like a conventional police procedural until about the halfway point, when it takes fire with the performances of Lee Marvin and Gloria Grahame.

This is one of the inspired performances of Grahame, a legendary character who became known as the "Can't Say No Girl," and not just because she sang the song in "Oklahoma!" Her untidy personal life led to four marriages and many affairs; one of her husbands was the director Nicholas Ray, after she worked for him in "In a Lonely Place" (1950), and another was Ray's son, Anthony. She won an Oscar for best supporting actress for "The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952) and should have won again the next year for "The Big Heat," where her energy is the best reason to see the film.

There was something fresh and modern about Grahame; she's always a little ditzy, as if nodding to an unheard melody. She was pretty but not beautiful, sassy but in a tired and knowing way, and she had a way of holding her face and her mouth relatively immobile while she talked, as if she was pretending to be well-behaved. "It wasn't the way I looked at a man," she said, "it was the thought behind it."

She always seems a little unstrung in "The Big Heat," as if she knows she's in danger and is trying to kid herself that she isn't. The Marvin character can be brutal to women; he hits one in a nightclub, and she tells Bannion that he hit her, too, "but most times, it's a lot of fun. Expensive fun."

Intriguing, how she half-tries to seduce him in his fleabag hotel room: "You're about as romantic as a pair of handcuffs. Didn't you ever tell a girl pretty things? You know, she's got hair like the west wind, eyes like limpid pools, and skin like velvet?"

Lee Marvin made a scary foil for her, with his long, lean face and his ugly-handsome scowl. If Alexander Scourby's mob boss seems like a writer's conceit, Marvin's character brings real menace into the picture, coldly and without remorse. The scene with the scalding coffee has become so famous that you forget it happens off-screen.

Afterward, when the bandaged Debby turns to Bannion for protection, she bravely still tries to keep up her act: "I guess the scar isn't so bad -- not if it's only on one side. I can always go through life sideways."

On the surface, "The Big Heat" is about Bannion's fearless one-man struggle against a mob so entrenched that the police commissioner is a regular at Marvin's poker game. But if that were its real subject, it would be long and flat and dry.

The women bring the life into it, along with Lee Marvin. We add up the toll. Lucy Chapman, the B girl who loved the suicidal cop and is betrayed by Bannion. Bannion's wife, who trusted him to protect her. And Debby, who likes him and maybe feels sorry for him, and gets her face scarred as a result, and then is sent to do his errand for him. After he explains to her how the widow's death will destroy the mob, he quietly mentions that he himself almost killed Bertha an hour ago, planting the seed. (Before she kills the widow, Debby stays in character: "We should use first names, Bertha. We're sisters under the mink.")

When Bannion returns to his job, reclaims his old desk, is greeted by his fellow cops and goes out on another case, he lets the guys know it's still business as usual; as he leaves the office he calls back over his shoulder, "Keep the coffee hot."

Not, under the circumstances, very tactful. Bannion's buried agenda is to set up the women, allow their deaths to confirm his hatred of the Lagana-Stone crew, and then wade in to get revenge. Of course he doesn't understand this himself, and it is perfectly possible for us to watch the movie and never have it occur to us. That's the beauty of Lang's moral ambidexterity. He tells the story of a heroic cop, while using it to mask another story, so much darker, beneath.

Cast & Credits

Dave Bannion: Glenn Ford
Debby Marsh: Gloria Grahame
Katie Bannion: Jocelyn Brando
Mike Lagana: Alexander Scourby
Vince Stone: Lee Marvin
Bertha Duncan: Jeannette Nolan

Directed by Fritz Lang. Screenplay by Sydney Boehm, based on the serial in the Saturday Evening Post by William P. McGivern. Music by Danielle Amfitheatrof; music direction by Mischa Bakaleinikoff. Photographed by Charles Lang.



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copyright 2005, rogerebert.com

Where The Sidewalk Ends

Where the Sidewalk Ends

Where the Sidewalk Ends
Fox Film Noir
1950 / B&W / 1:37 flat full frame / 95 min. / Street Date December 6, 2005 / 14.98
Starring Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney, Gary Merrill, Bert Freed, Tom Tully, Karl Malden, Ruth Donnelly, Craig Stevens
Cinematography Joseph LaShelle
Art Direction J. Russell Spencer, Lyle Wheeler
Film Editor Louis R. Loeffler
Original Music Cyril J. Mockridge
Written by Ben Hecht, Robert E. Kent, Frank P. Rosenberg, Victor Trivas from the novel Night Cry by William L. Stuart
Produced and Directed by Otto Preminger




Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Where the Sidewalk Ends is an interesting crossroads noir, poised between the expressionist 40s and the realist 50s. It looks like a studio film, Fox having backed away from its all-location ethic of a few years before. It's a story about sleazy cops and sleazier crooks yet has Gene Tierney to make it all seem on the glamorous side. It acknowledges the possibility of police corruption and hints at departmental flaws more extensive than lone rogue cop Dana Andrews. But when it comes to a wind-up, the old white-wash prevails. If it weren't for Dana Andrews' haunted portrait of a fallible law enforcement officer, the movie might have little to recommend it.

As it is, Otto Preminger's classy direction and the seemingly eternal night in New York work up a powerful noir charge, and good supporting actors and convincing art direction make us believe in the story we're seeing. And the fantasy of picking up Gene Tierney just by asking her to dinner is undeniably irresistible.


Synopsis:


Hot-headed detective Mark Dixon (Dana Andrews) is reprimanded for excessive brutality on the job, and then goes out to arrest Ken Paine (Craig Stevens), a suspected murderer in a knifing at a floating crap game. Paine attacks him so Mark counters with one blow ... that leaves Paine dead. Told over the phone that the dead man was a decorated war hero, Mark dumps the body and covers up the crime, hoping to pin the murder on Scalise (Gary Merrill), the racketeer most likely responsible for the original killing. Mark meets and falls in love with Paine's widow, model Morgan Taylor (Gene Tierney) and re-acquaints himself with her father, cabdriver Jiggs (Tom Tully). But complications ensue --- overeager new commander Lt. Thomas (Karl Malden) makes a good case against Jiggs as the killer, and Mark must stand by as the innocent man is railroaded by the system.

Where the Sidewalk Ends starts with a fairly corny image of feet walking over the titles chalked into a literal sidewalk, and then stepping into a gutter. Thus begins an essentially moral tale about the dangers of transgressing from the straight and true. But the movie never quite makes it into the gutter. We're never shown Mark Dixon beating up crime suspects, leaving a gap between the nice guy he seems to be and the kinds of activities that have him in the doghouse with his police superiors. We learn that he knocks a watchman out cold while tossing a dead body off a pier but are denied seeing it for ourselves. Stills exist showing that the scenes were shot, suggesting either that censors were tightening the screws after a few post-war years of violent license in crime thrillers, or that Fox didn't want Mark Dixon's positive status marred by images of brutality. He just got finished accidentally killing a man with one blow, and now he's klonking a helpless old watchman over the head hard enough to knock him unconscious? Only in the movies does that happen without killing somebody. 1

Mark Dixon is given a five-dollar motivation for his brutality - his dad was a gangster, see? In real life the proven reason for such behavior is institutionalized thuggery - in certain police cultures extreme interrogation techniques to intimidate 'interviewees' is a given. Where the Sidewalk Ends hints at this hypocrisy when Mark's new commander Lt. Thomas is told to "get the information out of a suspect using the methods Dixon would use." I'm surprised that censors let that pass.

But Dixon is a tough-guy hero so his (unseen) psychotic violence is in the spirit of crimebusting. We cheer for him mainly because he goes through a personal ordeal of atonement, offering himself as a sacrifice to clear his name, nail a crook and save a wrongly accused man. The contradictions in the story pile up quickly. Dixon swears loyalty to the force but is the first to admit that the system has put the innocent Jiggs on a fast track to the electric chair. Lt. Thomas is obviously out to make a big score on his first night of service, and nobody bats an eye when he constructs a case based on a lot of guesswork. If Paine was bleeding all over the stairwell, perhaps somebody should check Jiggs' taxi for signs that a dead body had been stashed in the trunk for the better part of an hour. Does the emotional Jiggs look like the kind of guy who could kill a man, and then operate so cooly?

For that matter, why is Mark so panicked that he covers up an accident so it looks like murder? Yes, he'd be in trouble but if he just took his chances he'd probably be okay. Mark's superior thinks he's too fast with his fists, not corrupt or murderous, and the department will gladly look to any alternative than putting one of its own on trial. When Dixon reacts so erratically, we have to think he's emotionally unbalanced. If he's that unstable, how does he commit to such decisive action later on? Where the Sidewalk Ends depends a lot on star power for its credibility.

(spoiler)
Nowadays the big issue would be Mark's forcing his own arrest at the end - the bad publicity for the department would certainly prompt the head cop to suggest that he just forget the whole thing. In a way, Scalise did kill Paine by framing him for murder. Steve probably confessed to this already. Why Mark's superior holds him for a murder charge is strange, when involuntary manslaughter is more appropriate. What's the difference between what Dixon did, and a suspect dying because cops put a choke hold on him or leave him bound in such a way that he expires from stress or exhaustion?

Dixon's personal anguish over harming Morgan and her father Jiggs motivates his actions and makes Where the Sidewalk Ends flow smoothly. We accept Morgan Taylor's falling in love with Dixon because we like the idea of Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews together, a residual effect from Laura perhaps. In real life we'd be wondering about their relationship. It doesn't look good when a woman takes up with a man involved in her husband's death, even if her husband was a rat. And (spoiler) it also doesn't seem quite right when Morgan so calmly accepts that Mark has been personally responsible for all the grief visited upon her father -- an excitable old fellow who might have a heart attack in jail. A different writer could easily make the Morgan Taylor character into a conniving femme fatale. She could have maneuvered her worthless hubby Ken Paine into dire straits with the mob. What is she doing at that floating crap game in the first place, acting so naturally? She'd naturally be overjoyed when she finds out that Dixon has gotten rid of Paine for her. And Dixon's handsome and available, too.

Where the Sidewalk Ends has interesting criminal villains, the kind that don't shrink from police and laugh up their sleeves at Dixon's attempts to intimidate them. It's interesting to compare Gary Merrill's sleazy floating crap game with the fairy-tale perpetrated in Guys and Dolls, Loesser and Burrows' Broadway show that premiered the same year. Scalise runs secret gambling but isn't above all kinds of craven villainy. For once, Savant agrees that a supporting character is probably meant to be homosexual: Neville Brand's Steve is Scalise's right hand man but also provides a guiding sensibility, warning him against offing Dixon because "killing a cop brings down too much heat."

Preminger's camera direction is almost invisible, with the Fox art department making equally undetectable blends between location work and studio shoots. One angle of a taxi pulling up to a building appears to be filmed in the same New York street as the famous shot in Once Upon a Time in America showing a giant bridge stretching out beyond the buildings.

Bert Freed stands out in the supporting actor category, with Craig Stevens (future Peter Gunn) doing well. Karl Malden's obvious bad guy chief is undeveloped, at least on the thematic plane. Pre-code comedienne Ruth Donnelly is in to deliver snappy Ben Hecht banter in a number of restaurant scenes. Woo woo girls Kathleen Hughes (It Came from Outer Space and Chili Williams (pin-up fame) can be spotted, as can be Gene Tierney's one-time husband, designer Oleg Cassini. She was apparently having romantic difficulties at this time, and I don't know whether this film came before or after she was sent to London to film Night and the City. Where the Sidewalk Ends is a much better vehicle for her.


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Fox's DVD of Where the Sidewalk Ends is an exceptionally clean transfer of an almost perfect film element, indicating that the film hasn't been out of the vault all that often. Joseph LaShelle's great B&W cinematography is a pleasure to watch. One great angle tucks the camera into an automobile elevator in a tall building, riding up with a limo full of gangsters, without a cut. Alfred Newman's "Street Scene" theme is almost the only music heard, and it's whistled under the main credits. Zanuck sure liked to cut corner when he could ... I don't know how expensive movie scores were in relative terms but I'll bet the policy made the music department uneasy.

Noir expert and author Eddie Muller offers an entertaining commentary with a hardboiled attitude of his own. He relates Where the Sidewalk Ends to rogue cop movies and has a number of well-researched ideas to share; he goes into welcome detail on the bit players, even stage actor Don Appell's only movie appearance. I'd complain about him using the opportunity to pitch his own hardboiled fiction, but I'm told his books are very good reads so I'll just add my plug to his own. A tough-minded trailer is included as well.


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On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Where the Sidewalk Ends rates:
Movie: Very Good
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: Trailer, Commentary by Eddie Muller, Still Photo gallery
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: December 3, 2005


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Footnote:

1. Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward's Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style prints the telltale photo of Dixon throwing Paine's body off the wharf. Savant helped proofread later editions but didn't catch a whopper in the Where the Sidewalk Ends entry: (spoiler) The synopsis wrongly states that Gary Merrill's Scalise is killed at the end. In a book packed with facts, written before Home Video made close research possible, mistakes happen.
Return


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1952 - Third Avenue Elevated Train

1952 - Third Avenue Elevated Train, originally uploaded by straatis.

1953 - Grand Central Terminal, man on luggage by Boris Klapwald

1953 - Grand Central Terminal, man on luggage by Boris Klapwald, originally uploaded by straatis.

1955 - View from Subway Car, El Line by Elliott Erwitt

1955 - View from Subway Car, El Line by Elliott Erwitt, originally uploaded by straatis.

1955 - Trying to get a cab in rainy Times Square

1955 - Trying to get a cab in rainy Times Square, originally uploaded by straatis.

1955 - Brooklyn Bridge from street below at night by William Gedney

1955 - Brooklyn Bridge from street below at night by William Gedney, originally uploaded by straatis.

1955 - 3rd Avenue El, A police officer makes the rounds on the abandoned tracks

1955 - 3rd Avenue El, A police officer makes the rounds on the abandoned tracks, originally uploaded by straatis.

1951 (10-17) Canal Street Station; Manhattan Saving Bank Bldg. on corner of Bowery & Canal Sts.

1951 (10-17) Canal Street Station; Manhattan Saving Bank Bldg. on corner of Bowery & Canal Sts., originally uploaded by straatis.

1952 - Manhattan by Kertesz

1952 - Manhattan by Kertesz, originally uploaded by straatis.

1956 - Roseland ballroom is between 51st and 52nd Streets on Broadway

1956 - Roseland ballroom is between 51st and 52nd Streets on Broadway, originally uploaded by straatis.

1950 - Garage, Park Avenue by Louis Faurer

1950 - Garage, Park Avenue by Louis Faurer, originally uploaded by straatis.

1950 - Fire on Pike Street, Manhattan

1950 - Fire on Pike Street, Manhattan, originally uploaded by straatis.

1950 - Chatham Square Station, 3rd Avenue El

1950 - Chatham Square Station, 3rd Avenue El, originally uploaded by straatis.

1953 - Grand Central Terminal, by Boris Klapwald

1953 - Grand Central Terminal, by Boris Klapwald, originally uploaded by straatis.

1950 - Times Square Movie Theatre by Bedrich Grunzweig

1950 - Times Square Movie Theatre by Bedrich Grunzweig, originally uploaded by straatis.

The Naked City

THE MOVIE:



"While you're thinkin' up a nice story about what didn't happen, supposin' you tell us what did."
Though the 1948 film version of The Naked City is regularly listed on the classic rosters of film noir, in many ways, I would argue for it being almost an anti-noir, Jules Dassin's clean-up on aisle hardboiled. While notably trading the impressionistic shadows that were a hallmark of the genre with the documentary look of Neorealism (swapping, in effect, the Germans for the Italians), he also extracts the dark cynicism from the crime picture, creating instead a police procedural where the good guys are clearly defined and the bad guys unambiguously punished. Though Dassin still had a few noirish tricks up his sleeve (Night & the City and Rififi were yet to come), he practically invented a whole other animal with The Naked City, eventually spawning the television show of the same name and paving the way for other day-in-the-life cop shows like Dragnet and the contemporary Law & Order franchise, as well as films like Mervyn LeRoy's The FBI Story.

The concept seems ridiculously simple now. Shoot on the streets of New York, in real locations, and follow the investigation of one crime from the discovery of the body through to the apprehension of the murderers. The lead officers establish the unshakable paradigm of the seasoned veteran and the well-meaning rookie: the wonderfully nonchalant Det. Lt. Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald, The Quiet Man) and the do-gooder family man Jimmy Halloran (Don Taylor, The Flying Leathernecks). Though these two men will essentially be our guides through the complicated case, the camera will actually drift from them to follow the cops on the street tailing suspects, the crime labs going over the evidence, and, in a true stroke of genius, the citizens of the city itself.

Even though The Naked City takes place over several days, Dassin and his screenwriters (Albert Maltz and Malvin Wald) framed the story like it was one day, opening the picture as the sun is setting and night life is entering into full swing. Led by a lively narrator (Mark Hellinger, the movie's producer, speaking as himself), the camera visits people on the night shift and in swank society parties, eavesdropping on the thoughts that drive their evening out or that keep them company as they slog through their tasks. We also see two seemingly random and unconnected crimes, but from a distance, so that we only know what happened but not to who or by whom. On into the next day, as we travel to work with Halloran and listen in on conversations on the subway, New York itself remains a breathing, pulsing element of the story. Often, Dassin's footage is just of crowd scenes, probably shot on the fly, and he would dub in conversations later, layering the dialogue over the image even when the extras weren't talking. While I am sure this was an economical decision, it actually works as an artistic one, adding to the overall feeling that all life in New York is connected. It doesn't matter who is talking, the metropolis is engaged in one ongoing discourse. (The way Dassin weaved through his crowds, jumping from one person to the next, I couldn't help thinking of Wim Wenders' eavesdropping angels in Wings of Desire.)

Some of the plot business in The Naked City comes off as a little dry, but the story is of such a classic model, it's always going to work on some level. As the police officers check out the angles on each clue, they end up finding more clues, gathering details until the various disparate pieces move together and make a complete report of what happened. Some of the work is tedious, hopping from one pawn shop to the next, from one textile merchant to another, but Dassin also takes us on rooftops to talk to construction workers and into tiny, ramshackle diners in search of witnesses. Where the movie starts to hum, however, is in the interrogation room. Muldoon sees right through the lying con man Frank Niles (Howard Duff, All My Sons) and pities his naïve fiancée Ruth (Dorothy Hart, I Was a Communist for the FBI) , and the old detective plays both of them like his own personal marionettes, letting them tell their lies and then tripping them up with the things they don't know he knows. Barry Fitzgerald is the prototypical police trickster, acting as if he's not too with it or maybe even doesn't care, lulling his targets into underestimating him so that he can strike when they least expect it. It's the most flashy element of a movie that otherwise takes some of the glamour out of police work.

Don Taylor is a good foil for Fitzgerald. Looking like a 1940s Luke Wilson, he rushes around digging for information, eager to make it all fit and haul the bad guys in. He's a little bit stiff and a whole lot milquetoast, but he stands as the model of good next to the characters he's bringing to justice. As Niles, Howard Duff is nervous and twitchy while Taylor is confident and solid; where the killer (Ted de Korsia, The Lady from Shanghai) is selfish and dirty, the detective gives of himself and always fights clean.

In the end, though, as the sun goes down on The Naked City yet again, it's driven home that the true story is of the place itself, of the bustling lives that move through the streets and the push and pull between those that break from the social contract and the men who put them back in line. In style, structure, and technique, The Naked City must have seemed revolutionary in 1948. Television has made the movie seem a little old hat by endlessly recycling the formula Dassin and the writers created, but The Naked City will always remain an icon. No one can ever forget the famous last lines from Hallinger's narration: "There are eight million stories in the Naked City...and this was one of them."

Or more accurately, The Naked City was the first, and when it comes down to it, probably still the best--whether it's one of eight hundred, eight million, or even eight billion.




THE DVD

Video:
The Naked City has been on DVD before, but it's been long out of print and the quality of that 1999 release left something to be desired. This new Criterion edition has restored the movie with a new digital transfer at its full-screen 1.33:1 aspect ratio. The back-and-white camera work is rich and detailed, and Dassin's photography of New York is seen here with a remarkable clarity. For the nitpickers, there are still some imperfections, such as stutters where the reels would have changed and sometimes a line or two ingrained in the picture, but I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Sound:
Criterion sticks to a mono mix that is nicely done. Very clean, with excellent values on all the voices and background sounds.

Extras:
There are quite a few extras on The Naked City – Criterion Collection. The most substantial feature is the contemporary audio commentary (recorded in the mid-1990s) by the principle architect of the movie, the original screenwriter Malvin Wald. He is detailed and informative, placing his movie in the proper historical context while also letting us in on the process of inspiration that led to this new idea, including drawing from such creative influences as police reports for an actual unsolved murder, author John Dos Passos, crime photographer Weegee (the original source of the title), westerns, documentaries, and Henry Hathwaway's film The House on 92nd Street. Wald has a good memory of the collaborative process on this movie, as well as the stir The Naked City caused upon release. He also has a modern outlook that encompasses all the various films and TV shows The Naked City has informed. My only complaint with the commentary is that Wald's throat frequently dries out, and listening to his scratchy voice often made my throat hurt.

Two video interviews with scholars emphasize the critical importance of The Naked City. The first is with Dana Polan, a film studies professor and author, and he explains the social tableau of the film in a half-hour lecture illustrated with clips. He puts particular emphasis on the role of immigrants and the class structure as represented in the story, including how this contributed to the HUAAC blacklisting of Dassin and Maltz. He also discusses Dassin's previous film, Brute Force, in essence giving us a sneak peak at the next Dassin movie scheduled to come from Criterion.

The second interviewee is James Sanders, a writer, architect, and Ken Burns' collaborator on the documentary series New York. In the twenty-six minute feature, he goes over the actual locations that show up in the final cut of The Naked City, comparing it to previous Hollywood back-lot recreations of New York and covering what the movies of the Italian Neorealists lent to the look of this picture. He also takes the discussion further into later images of New York in the cinema of the 1970s.

Both interviews are extremely informative and expand how we, as viewers, might interact with the material.




The last video feature is footage from Jules Dassin's 2004 appeared at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (40 minutes). There is an acknowledged inconsistency of audio quality in the program; it was shot in a lecture hall with a single camera and a p.a. system. The purpose of the talk is to give an overview of Dassin's long career, including his early beginnings and his French exile. Dassin is an amusing raconteur, and it's worth weathering the echo-laden audio to hear his stories, some of which touch on The Naked City.

Finally, we get a stills gallery featuring on-set shots and promotional items. The box art boasts that the original theatrical trailer was to be included; however, I do not see it anywhere on the DVD.

The interior booklet contains new liner notes by author Luc Sante and correspondence that producer Mark Hellinger wrote to Jules Dassin.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
Outside of some minor stiffness in tone/mood, The Naked City – Criterion Collection is still a crackling police drama told in a vivid, Neorealist style. By using New York as its backdrop, the film opens up beyond the average cops and criminals scenario, giving instead a broader glimpse at the environment in which crime can occur. Barry Fitzgerald gives an excellent performance as the savvy homicide detective, but it's hard not to be upstaged by the crisp images of the metropolis as it goes about its daily business. If you like Law & Order or CSI, I Highly Recommended that you schedule a visit to The Naked City and see where it all came from.




Jamie S. Rich is a novelist and comic book writer. His most recent work is the forthcoming hardboiled crime comic book You Have Killed Me, drawn by the incomparable Joëlle Jones. This follows his first original graphic novel with Jones, 12 Reasons Why I Love Her, and the 2007 prose novel Have You Seen the Horizon Lately?, all published by Oni Press. His next project is the comedy series Spell Checkers, again with Jones and artist Nicolas Hitori de. Follow Rich's blog at Confessions123.com.


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Film Noir 1

Film Noir 1, originally uploaded by NapalmPhoto.

High Wall

Just watched High Wall with Robert Taylor & Audrey Totter. What a delicious film. First and foremost the blacks in the picture are so dark, like India ink. The musical score is subdued, almost reminds me of Carter Burwell. The film has all the goodies; murder, adultery, amnesia, mental illness, pathos, blackmail, police procedurals, etc. The movie was directed by Curtis Bernhardt, another German who also directed Conflict with Bogart and Possessed with Joan Crawford.

I am surprised and dismayed that it is not available on DVD.


Tim Brophy

The Blue Dahlia

It's a shame this one isn't available on DVD.


May 9, 1946
THE SCREEN IN REVIEW; 'Blue Dahlia,' of Paramount, With Alan Ladd and
Veronica Lake in the Leading Roles, Proves an Exciting Picture 'The
DarkCorner,' in WhichMark Stevens, Lucille Ball Appear, Seen at
Roxy--'Little Giant' in Debut of Loew's Criterion
By BOSLEY CROWTHER
Published: May 9, 1946
To the present expanding cycle of hard-boiled and cynical films, Paramount
has contributed a honey of a rough-'em-up romance which goes by the name of
"The Blue Dahlia" and which came to the Paramount yesterday. And in this
floral fracas it has starred its leading tough guy, Alan Ladd, and its
equally dangerous and dynamic lady V-bomb, Veronica Lake. What with that
combination in this Raymond Chandler tale, it won't be simply blasting that
you will hear in Times Square for weeks to come.
For bones are being crushed with cold abandon, teeth are being callously
kicked in and shocks are being blandly detonated at close and regular
intervals on the Paramount screen. Also an air of deepening mystery
overhangs this tempestuous tale which shall render it none the less
intriguing to those lovers of the brutal and bizarre.
In the manner of previous Ladd pictures, the rough stuff begins at the
start, when our hero returns from the Pacific and finds his wife something
less than true. A clip on the jaw for her boy-friend and a passing twist
upon her shapely arms are sufficient to register the displeasure of the
husband before he walks out. But the facts of his presence and anger make
him the suspected one when, a few hours later, the gay wife is found in her
bungalow—slain!
And so it is that the hero is launched on a catch-as-catch-can chase, trying
to spot the killer before he himself is caught. Enroute, he falls in with a
lady of considerable nerve (Miss Lake, of course) who insists upon rendering
assistance which she is peculiarly qualified to give. He also has the
rooting interest of a couple of ex-Navy pals who do very little to aid him
but inject grimly comical twists. Thus confused, the perilous rat-race runs
in and out of gaudy Hollywood dives, fáncy hotels and police chambers until
the inevitable rat is caught.
Mr. Ladd, through it all, is his usual (as they say) imperturbable self,
displaying a frigid economy in his movement of lips and limbs—except, of
course, in those moments when it is essential that he protect himself. Then
he goes into action like a hawser that has suddenly snapped. One adversary
is nothing. Two thugs make a fair and equal match. The low art of
knuckle-duster fighting is elaborately displayed in this film.
As for Miss Lake, her contribution is essentially that of playing slightly
starved for a good man's honest affection, to which she manifests an
eagerness to respond. And it is indeed remarkable how obvious she makes this
look without doing very much. Howard da Silva is considerably more dramatic
as a high-powered night club proprietor, and William Bendix looks and acts
brutely eccentric as Mr. Ladd's slug-nutty pal. Doris Dowling as the
faithless wife, Tom Powers as a nerveless detective chief and Will Wright as
a crooked gumshoe worker give able performances.
George Marshall has tautly directed from Mr. Chandler's crafty script. The
tact of all this may be severely questioned, but it does make a brisk,
exciting show.
When a talented director and a resourceful company of players meet up with a
solid story, say one such as "The Dark Corner," then movie-going becomes a
particular pleasure. The new melodrama which Twentieth Century-Fox presented
yesterday at the Roxy is a tough-fibered, exciting entertainment revolving
around a private detective who is marked as the fall guy in a cleverly
contrived murder plot. Mark Stevens, a comparative newcomer looking and
acting very much like Fox's Dana Andrews, is convincingly hard-boiled as the
baffled gumshoe, Bradford Galt, who knows he is being framed into a murder
rap but has no knowledge of who is pulling the strings or why. His one clew
blows up when he is chloroformed by a strong arm "tail" and wakes up beside
the battered body of a former partner who once had him railroaded to prison
for manslaughter.
The trio of authors credited with "The Dark Corner" have not dealt all their
cards above board. Their trump is a trick doublecross, but they have worked
in that surprise with cunning and logic, so that the scattered story
elements all fall together like so many pieces in a well-ordered jigsaw
puzzle. The action, and there is plenty of it, is violent and explosive,
starting with a going-over Galt gives a mysterious toughie who has been
shadowing him. This character is identifield only as White Suit, obviously
because he affects such a suit and he is played with rugged naturalness by
William Bendix.
In fact, Director Henry Hathaway has drawn superior performances from most
of the cast. Lucille Ball has one of her happier roles as an acid-tongued
secretary who shares the private eye's troubles, and Clifton Webb has
another chance as an art gallery proprietor to indulge his talent for
acerbic characters. But if Mr. Webb doesn't change his style soon, his
admirers are likely to grow impatient. A strikingly good-looking girl named
Cathy Downs is introduced as a sort of second "Laura" in Mr. Webb's
cinematic marital affairs, but she is badly in need of dramatic training.
Mr. Hathaway has made such skillful use of the process screen in simulating
a New York background that it looks as though the action was photographed in
such locales as Third Avenue, Fifty-second Street and Broadway. And he
happily eschewed murky photography for mood effect, using instead a muted
and highly evocative musical score. His fine craftsmanship is very evident
throughout "The Dark Corner," and it is regrettable that he had to mar the
atmospheric realism by resorting to scene-faking in a few sequences. But
this is a minor shortcoming in an otherwise sizzling piece of melodrama.
Mark Stevens, who got his first good break in "From This Day Forward,"
proves in "The Dark Corner" that he has a rare combination of talent and
personality which, if properly developed, will place him in the forefront of
leading men in short order.

THE BLUE DAHLIA, an original screen play by Raymond Chandler; directed by
George Marshall; produced by John Houseman for Paramount Pictures. At the
Paramount.
Johnny Morrison . . . . . Alan Ladd
Joyce Harwood . . . . . Veronica Lake
Buzz Wanchek . . . . . William Bendix
Eddie Harwood . . . . . Howard da Silva
Helen Morrison . . . . . Doris Dowling
Captain Hendirckson . . . . . Tom Powers
George Copeland . . . . . Hugh Beaumont
Corelli . . . . . Howard Freeman
Leo . . . . . Don Costello
Dad Newell . . . . . Will Wright
The Man . . . . . Frank Faylen
Heath . . . . . Walter Sande
Mari Cathcart . . . . . Cathy Downs
Frank Reeves . . . . . Reed Hadley
Mrs. Kingsley . . . . . Constance Collier
Lucy Wilding . . . . . Molly Lamont
Mr. Bryson . . . . . Forbes Murray
Mrs. Bryson . . . . . Regina Wallace
Fred Foss . . . . . Charles Wagenheim
Milkman . . . . . Matt McHugh

The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3

Blast of Silence

There are many movies I admire or appreciate or enjoy. On very rare ocasions comes a movie that within the first few moments that I immediately connect to on a visceral level. Blast of Silence is such a movie. Stylistically it reminds me alot of Melville's Les Doulos. The tone and subject remind me a little of Taxi Driver. The movie is raw, existential poetry, stunningly beautiful and powerful. I am ordering the Criterion version today. I suggest you watch it. Below is an essay on the film and some links.

Tim Brophy

*********

By the time of Blast of Silence, Walter Benjamin, if not Edgar Allan Poe himself, had long ago laid the connection between detective fiction and flâneurs, and a new type of consciousness (emblematized specially by the modern phenomenon of movie-going), in which the crux of identity lies in nothing innate and little lasting, but in the act of perceiving, and, perceiving, in particular, the city: detective’s work. Yet neorealism would seem to be a necessary condition for flâneur movies, which, despite Night and the City’s influence, may be why relatively few major noirs followed in Benjamin’s tradition, devoted entirely to cutting through swaths of city spaces and social milieus, to exploring parties and restaurants and businesses around town in an ostensible search for clues, and to depicting a man as he finds or loses himself—perhaps the same thing—in urban phantasmagoria. (There are, of course, plenty of near-exceptions: Undercover Man, 99 River St., They Live By Night, On Dangerous Ground, While the City Sleeps, Pickup on South Street, and so on, as well as the complicated case of Hitchcock, in which every perception is loaded with intent). Voyage to Italy, in any case, still marks the break into movie modernism as the portrait of a relationship told almost entirely through their perceptions—though from that angle, Hitchcock’s Suspicion is nearly the same movie, just one with a reason for all the problems.*

Neorealism laid the groundwork, and since the 60s, in which Antonioni and Resnais ruled the arthouse—alongside Tati, who did not—with portraits of people who were little more than what they perceived or had perceived, flâneurism has, I guess, become a bit more fundamental to noirs in the age of “contemplative cinema”: Michael Mann’s in particular, most of Steven Spielberg’s recent output (if wanderers count as flâneurs), as well as the anti-neorealist quadruple run of fin-de-millenium masterpieces: Bringing Out the Dead, Mulholland Drive, Femme Fatale, and, best of all, Eyes Wide Shut, each positing Poe’s old notion that all a detective ever finds in the city is himself, or rather his base and basest desires.


But, if long post-Poe, Allen Baron’s Blast of Silence still did it all years ago. Opening symbolically (and quite appropriately) with a traveling/tracking shot from a train emerging from a tunnel, Silence works its way from birth to death, literally from the dark and back again, as hit man Frank Bono (Baron) walks around New York at Christmas time, trying to work up the hatred to kill a man. It’s more or less a silent movie shot on the streets—a loner passing through—with a swinging jazz score coming in and out (sometimes, in jazzy rhythm with the montage, culminating halfway through shots, and leaving the rest for near-silence), and the cackling Bookwyn-twinged voice-over of Lionel Stander, with an old scratchy, gravelly voice as low as Hell itself, delivered in second person like a devil on the left shoulder, with nobody to fill the right—even as he tells Bono that he’s on a mission from God, to die. Whether he is the thoughts Bono’s having, the thoughts we’re supposed to project, affirmations of the worst thoughts we’ve had about him—or are supposed to have had about ourselves—Stander, sounding not unlike the tempter insect voices in the best parts of Naked Lunch, is the ultimate in Mephistophelian mockers. He mocks a rare case of Bono socializing (“You know you’re making a mistake—you tell yourself they’ll get suspicious if you turn them down…you hate parties); he mocks the crowd Bono has to lose himself in (“Time to kill. 24 hours to stay lost in the crowd…with tha suckers”); he mocks Bono’s long-disbanded bourgeois ambitions (“You could have been an architect too”); and he even mocks Baron’s existential poise (“Why? You just don’t ask questions like that!”).

Would that most great artists lacked this much money! The long tracking shots alongside Bono walking on the sidewalk anticipate Chantal Akerman’s experimental documentaries, though Silence’s guerrilla means, prowling the streets, would endear it to the contemporaneous New York School, and perhaps indebt it to Irving Lerner’s own grunge home movie portrait of an obsessive serial killer, Murder by Contract (another inspiration for Taxi Driver, well warranting a Criterion release). But the films to which it truly merits comparison are Antonioni’s: La Notte, from the same year, and L’Eclisse, from the next. Silence plays like either, in dusky grays and inky blacks, with a man wandering through the inner circles of civilization and discovering that society is all spectacles, looking good and feeling terrible—though Silence, as opposed to Antonioni, is accompanied by the devil doing voice-over in place of a kindred female drifter.

Filming perceptions, Resnais and Antonioni pose the old phenomenological quandary of what’s subjective and what’s objective; so too Baron, if a bit more crudely. Stander, the soundtrack, is subjectivity, and the images, straight-up documentary footage straight from the streets, are objectivity. Yet Blast suggests the Dostoevskian possibility—or rather, preaches it—that all civilization’s pretty Christmas lights are glitzy decorations over the truth of one man’s private hell (all men, perhaps, but loneliness is essential to Baron’s neorealist conception of hell). For most of the film, the bright lights of consumer culture seem to be about all that emerge from the dark.

A city symphony in the same, constant minor key, Silence is nearly primitive in its technique—the camera shows what it can of people looking around New York, contextualizes them in their environment, and, in another Antonioni parallel, lets them fend for themselves within the frame (despite some tour de force passages, including a stunning ending, reminiscent of L’Eclisse’s, in which every quick cut seems to muster more turbulent weather)—and in its message. The one meaningful relationship in the film, if there is one, may be the love a fat acquaintance of Bono’s (Larry Tucker) has for his pet rabbits. The rabbits are in cages, and the acquaintance, well over 350 pounds and breathing heavily as if the room has closed in on him, acts like he is too. Love is a tantalizing impossibility—and even sex seems to be, as the only time Bono shows any personality is as a failed rapist. As in Antonioni, it’s impossible for people to relate; not a person within society is able or willing to distinguish him/herself except as a superficial type defined entirely by the environment he is passing through (as flâneurs Poe, and Tati, were likewise able to define anybody on the street by their appearance): a businessman, a partygoer, a contracted murderer. The only relationship Bono is allowed to have, Stander’s voiceover intimates, is with the man he kills.

This is more or less the sentimental romance of Raymond Chandler; it is Baron’s contribution to blame the doomed love not on a flea-bitten idealist run out of dreams, but (as Robert Altman would later do with his The Long Goodbye) on a swinging culture that will make you push peanuts on the floor with your chin for the entertainment of the crowd. There are loners and there are the masses, as there are in La Notte and L’Eclisse, and both are guarantees of anonymity; there are also, in Silence, the dead, the most anonymous of all. And for Bono, trying hard to keep quiet and repress his worst instincts and get a job done, anonymity is always the goal.

*And yet, in addition to all those noirs, a substantial number of silent films seems to consist of flâneur semi-fictions, perhaps because silent films are necessarily less devoted to extended character development, and to a character’s immediate impressions of an environment instead (especially as a self-reflection); perhaps because the silent era accommodated so much experimentation and improvisation that allowed stories to arise out of their surroundings. For example: city symphonies and Vertov’s above all, by a man who believed in films as grounding, revealing, and instituting a collective consciousness; Feuillade, whose phantasmagoria were inspired by newsreel events and given real, everyday spaces; silent comedians, and, in particular, Keaton, a man in constant reaction, who never offers an expected reaction shot; the middle section of Sunrise and much of The Last Laugh; The Crowd (famously, a Rossellini favorite); Fritz Lang, his films as much about will—about übermenschen—as about those at the mercy of the city they explore, unlike most of his later, stuck-in-place noirs; even parts of Underworld and Docks of the City; and so on, including, I hope, many I haven’t seen.

*** Blast of Silence is available on DVD from the Criterion Collection.

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Double Indemnity

Double Indemnity

Release Date: 1944


Roger Ebert / Dec 20, 1998



No, I never loved you Walter -- not you or anybody else. I'm rotten to the heart. I used you, just as you said. That's all you ever meant to me. Until a minute ago, when I couldn't fire that second shot.

Is she kidding? Walter thinks so: "Sorry, baby. I'm not buying.'' The puzzle of Billy Wilder's "Double Indemnity,'' the enigma that keeps it new, is what these two people really think of one another. They strut through the routine of a noir murder plot, with the tough talk and the cold sex play. But they never seem to really like each other all that much, and they don't seem that crazy about the money, either. What are they after?

Walter (Fred MacMurray) is Walter Neff ("two f's--like in Philadelphia''). He's an insurance salesman, successful but bored. The woman is Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), a lazy blond who met her current husband by nursing his wife--to death, according to her stepdaughter. Neff pays a call one day to renew her husband's automobile insurance. He's not at home, but she is, wrapped in a towel and standing at the top of a staircase. "I wanted to see her again,'' Neff tells us. "Close, and without that silly staircase between us.''

The story was written in the 1930s by James M. Cain, the hard-boiled author of The Postman Always Rings Twice. A screenplay kicked around Hollywood, but the Hays Office nixed it for "hardening audience attitudes toward crime.'' By 1944, Wilder thought he could film it. Cain wasn't available, so he hired Raymond Chandler to do the screenplay. Chandler, whose novel The Big Sleep Wilder loved, turned up drunk, smoked a smelly pipe, didn't know anything about screenplay construction, but could put a nasty spin on dialogue.

Together they eliminated Cain's complicated end-game and deepened the relationship between Neff and Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), the claims manager at the insurance company. They told the movie in flashback, narrated by Neff, who arrives at his office late at night, dripping blood, and recites into a Dictaphone. The voice-over worked so well that Wilder used it again in "Sunset Boulevard'' (1950), which was narrated by a character who is already dead the first time he speaks. No problem; "Double Indemnity'' originally ended with Neff in the gas chamber, but that scene was cut because an earlier one turned out to be the perfect way to close the film.

To describe the story is to miss the nuances that make it tantalizing. Phyllis wants Walter to sell her husband a $50,000 double indemnity policy, and then arrange the husband's "accidental'' death. Walter is willing, ostensibly because he's fallen under her sexual spell. They perform a clever substitution. The husband, on crutches with a broken leg, is choked to death before a train ride. Taking his place, Neff gets on the train and jumps off. They leave the husband's body on the tracks. Perfect. But later that night, going to the drugstore to establish an alibi, Neff remembers, "I couldn't hear my own footsteps. It was the walk of a dead man.''

A clever crime. But why did they do it? Phyllis was bored and her husband had lost a lot of money in the oil business, so she had a motive. But it's as if the idea of murder materialized only because Neff did -- right there in her living room, talking about insurance. On their third meeting, after a lot of aggressive wordplay, they agree to kill the husband and collect the money. I guess they also make love; in 1944 movies you can't be sure, but if they do, it's only the once.

Why? Is Neff blinded by lust and greed? That's the traditional reading of the film: weak man, strong woman. But he's aloof, cold, hard, terse. He always calls her "baby,'' as if she's a brand, not a woman. His eyes are guarded and his posture reserved. He's not moonstruck. And Phyllis? Cold, too. But later in the film she says she cares more about "them'' than about the money. We can believe the husband died for money if they both seem driven by greed, but they're not. We can believe he died because of their passion, but it seems more like a pretense, and fades away after the murder.

Standing back from the film and what it expects us to think, I see them engaged not in romance or theft, but in behavior. They're intoxicated by their personal styles. Styles learned in the movies, and from radio and the detective magazines. It's as if they were invented by Ben Hecht through his crime dialogue. Walter and Phyllis are pulp characters with little psychological depth, and that's the way Billy Wilder wants it. His best films are sardonic comedies, and in this one, Phyllis and Walter play a bad joke on themselves.

More genuine emotion is centered elsewhere. It involves Neff's fear of discovery, and his feelings for Keyes. Edward G. Robinson plays the inspector as a nonconformist who loosens his tie, reclines on the office couch, smokes cheap cigars, and wants to make Neff his assistant. He's a father figure, or more. He's also smart, and eventually he figures out that a crime was committed -- and exactly how it was committed. His investigation leads to two scenes of queasy tension. One is when Keyes invites Neff to his office, and then calls in a witness who saw Neff on the train. Another is when Keyes calls unexpectedly at Neff's apartment, when Neff expects Phyllis to arrive momentarily -- and incriminatingly.

Does Keyes suspect Neff? You can't really say. He arranges situations in which Neff's guilt might be discovered, but they're part of his routine techniques; perhaps only his subconscious, "the little man who lives in my stomach,'' suspects Neff.

The end of the film is curious (it's the beginning, too, so I'm not giving it away). Why does the wounded Neff go to the office and dictate a confession if he still presumably hopes to escape? Because he wants to be discovered by Keyes? Neff tells him, "You know why you couldn't figure this one, Keyes? I'll tell you. Because the guy you were looking for was too close -- right across the desk from you.'' Keyes says, "Closer than that, Walter,'' and then Neff says, "I love you, too.'' Neff has been lighting Keyes' smokes all during the movie, and now Keyes lights Neff's. You see why a gas chamber would have been superfluous.

Wilder's "Double Indemnity'' was one of the earlier films noir. The photography by John Seitz helped develop the noir style of sharp-edged shadows and shots, strange angles and lonely Edward Hopper settings. It's the right fit for the hard urban atmosphere and dialogue created by Cain, Chandler, and the other writers Edmund Wilson called "the boys in the back room.''

"Double Indemnity'' has one of the most familiar noir themes: The hero is not a criminal, but a weak man who is tempted and succumbs. In this "double'' story, the woman and man tempt one another; neither would have acted alone. Both are attracted not so much by the crime as by the thrill of committing it with the other person. Love and money are pretenses. The husband's death turns out to be their one-night stand.

Wilder, born in Austria in 1906, who arrived in America in 1933 and is still a Hollywood landmark, has an angle on stories like this. He doesn't go for the obvious arc. He isn't interested in the same things the characters are interested in. He wants to know what happens to them after they do what they think is so important. He doesn't want truth, but consequences.

Few other directors have made so many films that were so taut, savvy, cynical and, in many different ways and tones, funny. After a start as a screenwriter, his directorial credits include "The Lost Weekend,'' "Sunset Boulevard,'' "Stalag 17,'' "Sabrina,'' "The Seven Year Itch,'' "Witness for the Prosecution,'' "Some Like It Hot,'' "The Apartment'' and "The Fortune Cookie.'' I don't like lists but I can't stop typing. "Double Indemnity'' was his third film as a director. That early in his career, he was already cocky enough to begin a thriller with the lines, "I killed him for money -- and for a woman. I didn't get the money. And I didn't get the woman.'' And end it with the hero saying "I love you, too'' to Edward G. Robinson.

The Lady from Shanghai

Lady from Shanghai, The (1948) A

A highlight of film noir, The Lady from Shanghai is Orson Welles' visually stunning film of 1948, starring (former wife) Rita Hayworth. It's based on Sherwood King's novel, If I Die Before I Wake, adapted to the screen by Welles. Working with the film noir narrative and stylistic conventions, he fashions a complex tale of passion, adultery, and betrayal.
Welles plays Michael O'Hara, an existential hero, an unemployed Irish would-be novelist, who comes to the rescue of Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth in a short blond hair is at her prime), a mysterious and beautiful woman who is being mugged at Central Park.

After a brief and flirtatious conversation, the Elsa vanishes. Soon after, Michael is hired as a crew member for a pleasure cruise south of the border on a yacht owned by Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane), who is no other than the husband of his mystery lady, Elsa Bannister. It turns out he's a brilliant lawyer, severely crippled.

The Bannisters seem to have odious time for wanting O'Hara aboard their ship. O'Hara is introduced to Bannister's associate Glenn Anders (George Grisby), and is slowly implicated in a strange plan of murder and fraud for which he is then blamed.

Narrated by Welles, the film boasts a poignant voice-overs by Welles, with great lines, such as, "When I start out to make a fool of myself, there's little enough can stop me," or "I never make up my mind about anything at all, until it's over and done with." They don't write such dialogue in Hollywood anymore! Rita Hayworth, Welles' ex-wife, plays the femme fatale, a woman who is at once a victim and victimizer.

The plot is bizarre, baffling and a bit confusing, but the movie's stylistic brilliance more than makes up for its narrative faults. The late French director Francois Truffaut once said, that the raison d'etre for a film like "The Lady from Shanghai" is the "cinema itself." Indeed, in this mysterious and romantic thriller, the camera is the star. The noted hall of mirror climax is still riveting, decades after it was shot.

Most of the film is set in San Francisco, using its famous aquarium, Chinatown, and other locales most originally. But there are also trips to Acapulco and plenty of "action" aboard a yacht.

Credits

Columbia

Running Time: 87 minutes

Director and Producer: Orson Welles Associate Producers: Richard Wilson, William Castle Screenplay: Orson Welles; from the novel "Before I Die," by Sherwood King Cinematography: Charles Lawton, Jr. Special Mirror Effects: Lawrence Butler Sound: Lodge Cunningham Music Score: Heinz Roemheld Art Directors: Stephen Goosson Sturges Carne Set Decoration: Wilbur Menefee, Herman Schoenbrun Costumes: Jean Louis Film Editor: Viola Lawrence

Cast

Rita Hayworth (Elsa Bannister) Orson Welles (Michael O'Hara) Everett Sloane (Arthur Bannister) Glenn Anders (George Grisby) Ted de Corsia (Sid Broome) Erskine Sanford (Judge) Gus Schil (Goldie) Carl Frank (District Attorney)